Sunday, December 22, 2013

Everyone was afraid of Sister Mary.She was American and that was scary enough to
an English child who'd never met an American before, and "Mayen, shay taweckd
funny."She wore the full black nun's
habit with white around the face and a long black veil, like the nuns in The Sound of Music.Her crucifix hung down in front of her like a
weapon and when she walked...she always walked very fast as if she were genuinely
"on a mission from God"...it would swing from side to side ready to
swipe asunder any child who got in her way.When I first watched The Blues
Brothers and saw Sister Mary Stigmata (aka the Penguin), I knew on whom the
character was based.

When I started school at age 4, school lunches were provided
for one shilling, about 15 cents.Today
they cost 2 pounds, about $3.We used to
walk from St. Peter's Roman Catholic Primary School on Gordon Road, across North Walls, along
St. Peter's Street to Milner Hall, then the Catholic social center but which
had been the original boys' school, when the girls were taught by Benedictine
nuns in what is now the very upscale Royal Hotel across the street.In those days lunches were served from giant metal
pots (I used to think of them as cauldrons) by dinner ladies who said things
like, "Eat your cabbage; it'll make your hair curl" or "Don't
leave anything on your plate; think of the starving children in Africa."We
always thought, "I hate curly hair," and "If the African
children want it they can have it!"Truly we complained bitterly about the quality of the food but looking
back, the meals were actually pretty good: meat, potatoes and at least one
vegetable, and always fish on Friday because as you know Jesus always had fish
on Friday.School puddings (or desserts,
as you call them), could be nice except when dessicated coconut was glued on
top with jam and as I hated coconut, I couldn't eat them.

A year or two later, a new hall and kitchens were added to
the school building so we no longer had to walk to lunch.By this time, Sister Mary had joined the
school to teach the "first class" or PreK.I was grateful to have missed her by one
year.She lived with the other nuns in
the building next door to the presbytery where the priests lived.These two buildings were sandwiched between
Milner Hall and St. Peters Roman Catholic Church.I don't know about "Servants of
God" or "Brides of Christ"; it seemed to me, after doing all the
cooking and cleaning, they were more like "charladies to the priests."

Anyway, the traditional mealtime prayer of thanks was always
said before we ate our food:

Bless us, Oh Lord, and these thy
gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty,
through Christ, Our Lord.Amen.

Although the headmaster, Mr. Bogan, Mr. Peter Paul not-just-one-saints-name-but-two
Bogan sometimes said grace it eventually became Sister Mary's regular job.She'd stand on the steps of the new hall,
like a giant white-necked vulture.She'd
sign the cross then: "Bless us, Oh Lauwered," she say.She could make "Lord" last for
three syllables, i.e. "Bless us O Lauwered, " which I found hilarious
and at which I would've snickered, if I hadn't been so completely terrified of
her.

Every December, work would begin on the Christmas play which
was usually some sort of nativity.The
only time I remember it not being so was when we did Amahl and the Night Thieves.In my last year at primary school when I was ten years old, it was
decided to do a different kind of nativity in which none of the children would
have to learn lines because there would be a narrator who told the audience
everything they needed to know while the kids acted it out alongside.The narrator was the only one who was
required to learn anything.

Now I have no recollection of how or why it happened but I
was given the role as narrator.I was
delighted.Even at the age of ten I was
already considering a career on the stage.I hadn't yet prepared my Oscar acceptance speech -- I did that the
following year after seeing Barbra Streisand win the award for best lead
actress -- but I was thinking about becoming an actor.What a good start this would be!

The only downside of taking on this role was that Sister
Mary was the director of the show which meant that she'd be at every rehearsal
and would be telling me what to do.Somehow, since the early days of my schooling, I had managed to avoid
her ever-more frightening figure as it stormed down the main corridor of our
tiny school.Through hiding in doorways
and scurrying about the playground, our paths had never crossed and so the
performance in this play was to be my first real encounter with the terrors of
Sister Mary.

To my horror, the narrator had a lot of lines.Saying that would imply that I had some knowledge,
at the tender age of ten, of how long it would take to learn a large number of lines...that is not so...I had no
idea.However, what I did know and could
foresee was that there was ample opportunity here for Sister Mary to get on my
case and be displeased with me.She seemed to be in an almost constant state
of displeasure.I was sure that whatever
I did, she would be displeased with
me.And more than anything in life, I
lived in fear of people -- anyone at all -- being displeased with me.The slightest criticism from anyone except my
mother could reduce me to tears in a second and crying in public was another
thing that frightened me.A vicious
cycle if ever there was one.

In the early stages of rehearsal, I stood at the side of the
stage, reading the lines from the script, as Sister Mary moved the younger children
around behind me.The stage wasn't
really a stage at all.The hall (no
longer new and now just called "the hall") had two long steps down
the length of it which led to a wide corridor.If you went left along the corridor, you'd get the back exit of the
school.If you went right, you'd reach
the classrooms.Thus, the top step was
actually the corridor and became "the stage.The two steps leading to it were the front
and middle of the stage.

Everything was going quite well.Sister Mary wasn't really taking much notice
of me and I just read my stuff while she rehearsed everyone else.When I wasn't reading I'd stand and look at
the pictures on the wall of the hall.High
up on the left, there was a large painting of the two fishes and the five loaves.High up on the right, a picture of the
crossed keys of St. Peter after whom the school was named.At the end, taking up most of the width of
the room, there was a huge colorful mural that I could stare at for hours and
always see something new.I'd be lost in
thought when the sister would suddenly shout, "Now start reading
again!" I would read:

"Christmas...Christmas...what is Christmas?Just a time for fun, music and
merry-making?Just a time
for..."Unfortunately, that's all I
have left in my head now, in spite of vigorous internet searches.But it went on, as far as I can recall, that
there was much more to Christmas than "fun, music, and merry-making"
-- that it was a serious time and people all over the world were dying of
starvation while we ate our festive dinners, and even more important than that was
the birth of the baby Jesus.

At this point in my acting career, I can tell you that there
is a method to learning lines.Of course
one hopes that lines will be learned during the rehearsal process, that the
daily running of the lines while working with your fellow actors will instill
them in your mind and the movement provided by one's director will also help fix
them -- actors call this "muscle memory" -- if I walk over here then
this is the line I say; if I pick up this cup, this is the line I say.When all else fails, and most actors hate
this, one has to repeat the lines over and over again at home, in the car, at
the bank, in the supermarket line, at the gym, attracting unwelcome attention
as passers-by think one has gone certifiably crazy.

I did not know any of this when I was ten and clearly nor
did Sister Mary.At some point in the
rehearsal process, she told me that I should know my lines by now and that I
was to put down the script.And this, my
friends, is where the trouble really began.I'd managed to avoid her focus until now but at this point, all her
impatience at the younger students, all her frustrations at the fact the play
was to be performed on Sunday afternoon and it was nowhere near ready, all her wrath
at the sheer thanklessness of her task, came raining down on me.I'd gone from being the quiet little girl
innocently reading the story on one side of the stage to the object of all her
hatred and bile.At least, this is how it
felt to me.

Now instead of being behind me moving around the little
ones, she was in front of me, standing in the hall while I stood at the side of
the stage, and screaming at me, "Move over there!" and "Sit on
the step there!" and "Put that script down!"There I was, abandoned in the middle of the
stage with the two fishes and five loaves on one side; the crossed keys on the
other; and right in the middle, a very hot, cross nun.

I was afraid to tell my mother about all this because it
seemed to me quite wrong to tell tales about a nun, and anyway, in those days
parents tended to think teachers were right, whatever the circumstances.It's different these days.Parents don't seem to support teachers the
way they did when I was at school.I had
no reason to think my mother would believe me if I told her that Sister Mary
wasn't being very nice to me.I wouldn't
have been at all surprised if my mother said, in response to such an accusation:
"Well, dear, I'm sure you deserved it...".

So now I lived in terror all day during class that at the
end of the day I would again be the victim of Sister Mary's anger.I seemed unable to learn the lines.Naturally I know now that stark terror can
shake the simplest words from one's mouth.But I didn't know that then and the more she shouted at me, the more
difficult it became for me to say a word.Even reading was tough.And of
course all I wanted to do was burst into tears and ask her why she was being so
mean; what had I ever done to her?Couldn't she see I was desperate to please and trying my best?

It all came to a head on Friday afternoon, at our last
school-day rehearsal before the Sunday show.There was to be a final dress rehearsal on Saturday but Friday was the
last official run-through.I had a
costume now, a beautiful, full-length cream-colored satin dress.It was gorgeous...but I couldn't appreciate
it because I was in such a state.My
long hair was pulled back off my face in a high, tight pony-tale at the back of
my head.

Sister Mary had given me some basic blocking: move across
the stage on this line, point to the manger on this, etc. I still didn't know
my lines and was stumbling all over the place and making stuff up.In the theatre world, we call this
improvisation but in the land
of Catholic nativity
plays, it's apparently known as disobedience.

I was supposed to say a particular line then cross the stage
to the other side.But I didn't.I don't know if I said the line incorrectly
or my muscle memory didn't click in or I was so utterly petrified that I was
rooted to the spot, but I didn't move when I was supposed to.Sister Mary stomped up the steps, grabbed
hold of my pony tail and dragged me across the stage to where I was supposed to
be.

My pony tail had been quite tightly gathered so it was
already rather uncomfortable.Add to
that the fact that it had been up like that for several hours and -- I think
the ladies will back me up here -- the skin around it tends to start aching
after a while. And then the sister had
twisted my hair in her hand to pull me.All this combined meant that it really hurt.But the real hurt I felt was at being so
wronged.What had I ever done to this
woman?Why did she hate me?I'd tried my best and it wasn't good
enough.I was a failure.

Oh, the pain of trying not to cry, not to let her see how
much she'd hurt me.As soon as I was
released and started the walk home, I started to cry.I always thought nuns were supposed to be sweet
and kindly.I sobbed all the way.

My mother was having a bath when I got home.It was my usual habit to go into the bathroom
and sit on the down-turned toilet seat to tell her about my day but I didn't
want to do that because she'd see I'd been crying and she'd make me tell her
why.But she called out to me to join
her and I couldn't say no.I cleared up
face, put on a smile and sat down.But
you know what it's like when you've been crying, particularly as a kid, it only
takes one kind word to set you off again and my mother noticed my red eyes immediately
and asked what was wrong.I didn't want
to tell her, felt terrible about telling on Sister Mary but I had to tell
someone and who else by my beloved mum.So I told her, without much detail, that Sister Mary was angry I hadn't
learned my lines and pulled my hair.I
didn't have to say another word.

No one could've been more surprised than I when my mother
stood up in the bath, quite naked of course because, well, that's how one takes
a bath, and said, "Let me put on some clothes.We're going down the school!"You would have to know my mother to know how
out of character this was.She was a
sweet, peace-loving, mild-mannered woman who hated arguments or confrontations
of any kind.To this day, my siblings
and I have issues with expressing anger or standing up for ourselves -- my
therapist and I have worked through some of mine -- but you've got to
understand, I had never, ever seen this side of my mother before.

In a matter of moments, she
was dressed and we were walking back
to St. Peter's RC Primary.I use the
term "walking" loosely -- she ploughed through passers-by on the
street.If my mother had been wearing a
crucifix on a chain like Sister Mary, she'd have knocked people into the oncoming
traffic with it.She held my hand in a
knuckle-cracking grip.I was scared all
over again.I felt sick to my stomach;
my heart was pounding.What if Sister
Mary denied it, said I'd made it up?If
she could torture a little girl, she could certainly lie about her.

We went through the front entrance of the school, and I'm
necessarily vague about the next bit as I think I've blocked it from my
memory.If this were a movie, we would
storm down the corridor straight to the headmaster's office.But I think we stopped at the first room in
the building which was Sister Mary's room.I'd like to tell you that I heard my mother say, "If you ever touch
my daughter again, I'll have your guts for garters" because that was one
of her favorite sayings but I can't because I don't remember if she went in and
partially closed the door leaving me outside or if she went in holding my
hand.I think she said something like,
"I hear from Bernadette that you pulled her hair and if you ever do something
like that again, (I'll have your guts for garters) there will be
repercussions."All of this is
vague, I can't be sure and I don't want to lie to you.

So let me tell you instead the results of my mother's
actions.I dreaded the next day's final
dress rehearsal but when I arrived at school, Sister Mary was all smiles, a
totally unfamiliar sight.Not a word was
said about meeting my mother.I was
dressed in my lovely angelic outfit and was allowed to read my script while
standing on the left of the stage.I
waited for the sister to tell me to move but no instructions came.Lights were set up; music was added.The whole rehearsal went like clockwork and
not one single voice was raised in anything other than Christmas song.

The actual performance was spectacular, like a magical dream.A full house of happy parents watching their
adorable children on stage; glorious Christmas music and a rather surprised ten
year-old narrator.I was given a fresh
script which made my many lines much clearer for me to read.But you know what?I didn't need it!I mean, it was a great comfort having it in
my hand like an angel reading from a divine scroll but I discovered that, once
the bullying was over, I really did know the lines.

I've met other nuns since then and they've always been
exactly as I envisioned as a child: sweet and kind.I found out as an adult that Sister Mary's
order of nuns chose a path for each sister to follow and the path chosen was
the one they least wanted to take.If a
nun didn't like something, she was going to deal with it by confronting
it.Sister Mary's most despised thing in
the whole wide world was children, she LOATHED them.Thus her path was to spend time with children
for as long as it took to defeat that demon.And all I have to say to that is...well, thanks a bunch!

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Although I grew up with the Coventry
Carol, hearing it sung most Decembers by the Winchester Cathedral Choir or at the Mayor's Advent Carol Concert, I didn't sing it myself until the State Theatre's A CHRISTMAS CAROL in 2005. And I didn't discover its origin until relatively recently. I found its history extremely interesting so I thought I'd share it. There are more versions available on youtube than I imagined but I've chosen the one closest to how I remember it as a child.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the following
encapsulation:

The "Coventry Carol" is a Christmas carol
dating from the 16th century. The carol was performed in Coventry
in England
as part of a mystery play called The
Pageant of the Shearman and Tailors.The play depicts the Christmas story from chapter two in the Gospel of
Matthew. The carol refers to the Massacre of the Innocents, in which Herod
ordered all male infants under the age of two in Bethlehem to be killed. The lyrics of this
haunting carol represent a mother's lament for her doomed child. It is the only
carol that has survived from this play.

It is notable as a well-known example of a Picardy
third (a harmonic device used in Western classical music, referring to the use
of a major chord at the end of a musical section that is either modal or in a
minor key.)The author is unknown. The
oldest known text was written down by Robert Croo in 1534, and the oldest known
printing of the melody dates from 1591. The carol is traditionally sung a
cappella. There is an alternative setting of the carol by Kenneth Leighton;
another by Phillip Stopford.

The only manuscript copy to have survived into recent times
was burnt in 1875. Our knowledge of the lyrics is therefore based on two very
poor quality transcriptions from the early nineteenth century, and there is
considerable doubt about many of the words. Some of the transcribed words are
difficult to make sense of: for example, in the last verse "And ever morne
and may For thi parting Neither say nor singe" is not clear. Various
modern editors have made different attempts to make sense of the words, so such
variations may be found as "ever mourn and say", "every morn and
day", "ever mourn and sigh". The following is one attempted
reconstruction.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Armed
with just a sleigh and a reindeer, he allegedly delivers toys to children the
world over.Using computers, we assess
if it is physically possible.

Do you believe in Santa Claus?This is a complex theological question that
each child must decide for him or herself.Until now, that is.With the aid
of computers, we have conducted a rigorous statistical investigation into the
question of Santa's existence.

We begin by assuming that Santa
Claus really does exist.Now, if you've
learned anything about human nature, you know it's highly unlikely that a
normal man would choose to devote his life to making toys and delivering them to
boys and girls the world over.But this
is an objective enquiry, and questions of motivation aren't relevant.We want only to know whether such a man could
accomplish his mission.

Santa's first obstacle is that no
known species of reindeer can fly.However, scientists estimate that out of the earth's roughly two million
species of living organisms, three hundred thousand or so have yet to be
classified. So we can't rule out the slight possibility that a species of reindeer
does, in fact, exist.And that no one
besides Santa has ever seen one.

A bigger obstacle for Santa is that
there are two billion children under eighteen in the world.The good news is that he needs to deliver
presents only to Christian children, of whom there are approximately three
hundred and seventy-eight million.Let's
assume that fifteen percent of these Christian children are bad and thus --
like Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children -- ineligible for
gift-getting.Still at an average of
three point five children per household, Santa has a back-breaking ninety-one
point eight million homes to visit on any given Christmas Eve.

Fortunately, Santa has thirty-one
hours of Christmas Eve darkness to visit all these homes if he travels from east
to west, thanks to the rotation of the earth.Unfortunately, this still works out to eight hundred and twenty-two
point eight visits per second.So, for
each Christian household with good children, Santa has just over a thousandth
of a second to land, hope out of his sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the
stockings, distribute the rest of the presents under the tree, eat whatever
snacks have been left out, get back up the chimney, climb back into his
sleight, take off and fly to the next house.

How fast is Santa moving?Assuming all ninety-one point eight million
stops are spread evenly over the earth's landmass, Santa must travel nought
point seven nine miles per household -- a total trip of seventy-two million,
five hundred and twenty-two thousand miles.(This is a conservative estimate.It doesn't include trips across oceans, feeding stops for the reindeer,
etc.)Given the thirty-one hour time
period, Santa's sleigh must maintain an average speed of six hundred and fifty
miles per second, or more than three thousand times the speed of sound.To give you an idea how fast that is, the
fastest man-made vehicle ever built, the Ulysses space probe, travels at a
relatively poky pace of twenty-seven point four miles a second, and
conventional, land-bound reindeer travel at a top speed of fifteen miles per
hour.But let's just assume that Santa's
flying reindeer can somehow reach hyper-sonic speeds -- thanks, say, to the
magical spirit of Christmas giving.

Let's take a close look at Santa's
vehicle. First of all, assuming a cheapo
two pounds of presents per child (that's like the crummy Lego set), the sleigh
must still be able to carry a load of three hundred and twenty-one thousand,
eight hundred tons -- plus Santa, an overweight man.On land, a reindeer can't pull more than
three hundred pounds of freight and, even assuming that flying reindeer can
pull ten times that amount, Santa's massive sleigh has to be drawn by two
hundred and fourteen thousand, two hundred beasts.They increase the overall weight of the Santa
payload to three hundred and fifty-three thousand, four hundred and thirty tons
(not including the weight of the sleigh itself).This is more than four times the weight of
the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner.Imagine: Santa skimming over rooftops in a gargantuan hypersonic
aircraft with even less manoevrability than a Big Wheel.

Here's where things get fun.Three hundred and fifty-three thousand tons
of reindeer and presents are going to create an enormous amount of
air-resistance -- especially at six hundred and fifty miles per second.This air-resistance will heat the reindeer in
the same way that spaceships are heated up when they re-enter the earth's
atmosphere.According to our
calculations, the lead pair of reindeer will absorb fourteen point three
quintillion joules of energy per second each.This means they will burst into spectacular, multicolored flames almost
instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them.As Santa continues on his mission -- leaving
deafening sonic booms in his wake -- charred reindeer will constantly be
sloughed off.All two hundred and
fourteen thousand, two hundred reindeer will be dead within four point two six
thousandths of a second.

As for Santa, he will be subject to
centrifugal forces seventeen thousand, five hundred point nought six times
greater than gravity.A two hundred and
fifty pound Santa will be pinned to the back of his sleigh by four million,
three hundred and seventy-five and fifteen pounds of force (after we deduct his
weight).This force will kill Santa
instantly, crushing his bones, pulverizing his flesh, turning him into pink
goo.In other words, if Santa tries to
deliver presents of Christmas Ever to every qualified boy and girl on the face
of the earth, he will be liquefied.If
he even exists, he's already dead.

Saturday, December 7, 2013

I've been in five different productions of Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL since arriving in America in 1992, excluding my own solo presentation which is in its fifth manifestation. Each has its own special qualities and memories.

One of my favorite moments happened on the evening that Ms. Carla Nickerson, a wonderful Austin actress who played Mrs. Cratchit (among others) in the 2004 and 2005 productions at the State Theatre, took the stage and introduced herself as Mrs. Bob Marley. It's a wonder this hadn't taken place before to anyone who has to mention either Jacob Marley or Bob Cratchit -- so easy to get those mixed up, particularly when there exists in history the reggae giant, Bob Marley. On that particular night, I was in the middle of a quick change (stage-left) into Ms. Belinda Cratchit, Bob Cratchit's daughter. I had put on my blue pinafore and was just pulling on hairband with three brown ringlets on either side when I heard that immortal line,

"Mr. Bob Marley's house. Mr. Bob Marley's wife, Mrs. Bob Marley."

Since my line, as I zipped on stage immediately afterward, carrying plates, and curtseying to the audience was, "Belinda Cratchit" -- I didn't know whether to say, "Belinda Marley" to support my stage mother, or keep my line as it was supposed to be. If I said Cratchit, it would point out Carla's slip of the tongue, but if I said Marley, we'd have to change that familiar family name for the rest of the play. So I curtseyed and said, "Belinda Cratchit." No sooner had I uttered the words than Carla's eyes widened with horror as she continued, "Her daughter..." By this time, all the other actors were coming on stage and taking their place in the scene. We could barely hold it together! Like the professional actors we were, we channeled that hilarity into the moment. It was the liveliest, merriest, unashamedly entertaining Cratchit scene in the history of the play -- at least for the actors. Fingers crossed it translated to the audience!

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Scrooge and the Ghost passed on, invisible, straight to Scrooge's
clerk's; and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped to
bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the sprinklings of his torch. Think of
that! Bob had but fifteen "Bob" a week himself; he pocketed on
Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name; and yet the Ghost of
Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house!

Then up rose Mrs.
Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, brave
in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid
the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in
ribbons; while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of
potatoes, and, getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob's private
property, conferred upon his son and heir in honor of the day) into his mouth,
rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen in
the fashionable Park And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl came tearing
in, screaming that outside the baker's they had smelt the goose, and known it
for their own; and, basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these
young Cratchits danced about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to
the skies, while he (not proud, although his collars nearly choked him) blew
the fire, until the slow potatoes, bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan
lid to be let out and peeled.

"What has ever
got your precious father then?" said Mrs. Cratchit. "And your
brother Tiny Tim! And Martha warn't as late last Christmas day by half an
hour!"

"Here's Martha,
mother!" said a girl, appearing as she spoke.

"Here's Martha,
mother!" cried the two young Cratchits. "Hurrah! There's
such a goose, Martha!"

"Why, bless
your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!" said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing
her a dozen times, an taking off her shawl and bonnet for her.

"We'd a deal of
work to finish up last night," replied the girl, "and had to clear
away this morning, mother!"

"Well!
Never mind so long as you are come," said Mrs. Cratchit. "Sit
ye down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye!"

"No, no!
There's father coming," cried the two young Cratchits, who were everywhere
at once. "Hide, Martha, hide!"

So Martha hid
herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of
comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare
clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his
shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs
supported by an iron frame!

"Why, where's
our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.

"Not
coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.

"Not
coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for he
had been Tim's blood-horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant,
-- "not coming upon Christmas day!"

Martha didn't like
to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so she came out prematurely
from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young
Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off to the wash-house that he might
hear the pudding singing in the copper.

"And how did
little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his
credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content.

"As good as
gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful,
sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever
heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the
church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember,
upon Christmas day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see."

Bob's voice was
tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim
was growing strong and hearty. His
active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before
another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool beside
the fire; and while Bob, turning up his cuffs, -- as if, poor fellow, they were
capable of being made more shabby, -- compounded some hot mixture in a jug with
gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer,
Master Peter and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose,
with which they soon returned in high procession.

Mrs. Cratchit made
the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter
mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor; Miss Belinda sweetened up the
applesauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a
tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not
forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into
their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be
helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was
succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the
carving knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when
the long-expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose
all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits,
beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried, Hurrah!

There never was such
a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose
cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness, were the themes of
universal admiration. Eked out by applesauce and mashed potatoes, it was
a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with
great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't
ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest
Cratchits in particular were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows!
But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room
alone, -- too nervous to bear witnesses, -- to take the pudding up, and bring
it in. Suppose it should not be done
enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody
should have got over the wall of the back yard, and stolen it, while they were
merry with the goose, -- a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became
livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.

Hallo! A great
deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a
washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a
pastry-cook's next door to each other with a laundress's next door to that!
That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered, --
flushed but smiling proudly, -- with the pudding, like a speckled cannonball,
so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a quartern of ignited brandy, and
bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

O, a wonderful
pudding I Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the
greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage.
Mrs.Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she
had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something
to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a
large family. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.

At last the dinner
was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made
up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples
and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovelful of chestnuts on the fire.

Then all the
Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle,
and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass, -- two tumblers,
and a custard cup without a handle.

These held the hot
stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob
served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and
crackled noisily. Then Bob proposed: --

"A Merry
Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!" Which all the family
re-echoed. "God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all. He sat very close to his father's side, upon
his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he
loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might
be taken from him.

Scrooge raised his
head speedily, on hearing his own name.

"Mr.
Scrooge," said Bob; "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the
Feast!"

"The Founder of
the Feast indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening. "I wish I
had him here I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon and I hope he'd have
a good appetite for it."

"My dear,"
said Bob, "the children! Christmas day."

"It should be
Christmas day, I am sure," said she, "on which one drinks the health
of such a odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he
is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!"

"My dear,"
was Bob's mild answer, "Christmas day."

"I'll drink his
health for your sake and the day's," said Mrs. Cratchit, "not for
his. Long life to him! A merry Christmas and a happy New
Year! He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!"

The children drank
the toast after her. It was the first of their proceedings which had no
heartiness in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn't care two
pence for it. Scrooge was the ogre of the family. The mention of his
name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full five
minutes.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

I was brought up Roman Catholic in Winchester, England.Like all Catholic families, we had various
traditions leading up to Christmas -- the Advent Calendar, the list for Father
Christmas (a.k.a. Santa Claus), and the putting together of the
Creche.Actually, we didn’t call it a
crèche in our house, we called it the crib scene.Anyway, every year we would unpack each item
and place it lovingly in the open wooden shed: Mary, Joseph, the Baby Jesus,
all the shepherds, the sheep, the donkey, an assortment of other animals, the
wise men, the camels, the angels, etc.As you know, everyone was present at the birth of Jesus on 25th December
AD 0000, at least that's what I thought.

Nativity at St. Lawrence Church, Winchester

When I was 9 years old, I unpacked the Nativity pieces ready
to put together the Christmas scene.The
previous year, we’d lost the little manger and everyone had been rather upset.We’d had to use an empty
matchbox, you know, one of those little purple boxes made of balsa wood.The baby Jesus nestled in cotton wool quite
comfortably until Epiphany on 6th January.But this year I was horrified to find that the baby Jesus had
disappeared too.So now we had no baby
Jesus and no manger.This was
serious.I don’t mean to be funny but
when I was growing up, and particularly in my family, there wasn’t the kind of
ready cash people seem to have nowadays, and there certainly weren’t any credit
cards.The loss of the baby Jesus and
his manger was a big deal.

And so it was that I found myself on Saturday morning, walking around Woolworths on Winchester
High Street.I don’t know if Woolworths in America
was the same as Woolworths in England.Long aisles with a shop assistant marching up
and down like a warden, keeping an eye on counters that were filled with
goodies, everything costing under a shilling.Oh dear, English money before decimalization. Alright, here we go.A shilling
was 12 pennies; 20 shillings made up a pound.A pound in those days was worth about 5 dollars.Therefore a dollar would be 48 pennies, i.e.
4 shillings. Is that right? You do the math.Under a shilling was less than a
quarter.Pretty cheap.

I wasn’t looking for a baby Jesus.I really wasn’t.Walking around Woolworths on a Saturday
morning was quite simply one of my favorite things to do.If 9 years old seems young to you for a child
to be ambling around the streets of a city’s down-town area, I can only say
that everything was safer then.My
mother never worried about me and there was never anything to worry about.

My favorite counter was the sweet counter, and by that, I
mean the candy counter.All sorts of
different kinds of candy.It was a
youngster’s delight.If I list the
English candy, I know my American friends won't have the slightest idea what I’m talking
about.We probably had the same candy
but the names were different.We had flying
saucers: rice paper with sherbet in the middle which you sucked until the rice
paper melted, stuck to the roof of your mouth and shot the sherbet down your
throat, choking you half to death. Fun. We
had shrimps: large, pink, shrimp-shaped lumps of sugary stuff that tasted a bit
like bubble gum but had the texture of sweet rubber.You’d chew and chew and chew till your mouth
was bright pink, like I used to imagine it would be if you’d eaten a whole, raw
lobster.

It just so happened that right next to the sweet counter was
the little plastic objects counter.If America
these days has lots of things with “Made in China”
written on them, in England in the 1960s it was “Made in Hong Kong.”Every
little plastic object was made in Hong Kong.All of a sudden, I was struck magpie syndrome, my
eyes were drawn to all these bright, shiny things and the one that attracted me
most was a brightly colored, very shiny baby Jesus in a manger.Not just a baby Jesus, not just a manger but
a two-in-one, baby Jesus in a manger.

I left the sweet counter and went to look close up.There must’ve been a hundred baby Jesus’s in
the baby Jesus section, all exactly the same.I didn’t care.The more the
merrier.Let everyone have a shiny,
plastic, made in Hong Kong baby Jesus. "Baby Jesus's for Everyone!" I picked one up. The manger was brown and shiny; the straw was
yellow and shiny; the baby Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes, white and
shiny.The King of Kings had an actual
face with an actual facial expression.It was gorgeous.Frankly, it was
much nicer than our old baby Jesus which was tiny and whose face was so small
there was no expression, not even any features to speak of.This was a magnificent piece of
craftsmanship.Really, it was.It didn't matter that there were hundreds of
them all exactly the same.It was the
most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

I turned it over and looked at the price.Sixpence.Okay, here we go.There were 20
shillings in a pound; there were 12 pennies in a shilling so there were 240
pennies in a pound.Or…sixpence was half
a shilling.So it was cheap.But when you’re 9, it has to be really cheap
and it wasn’t cheap enough.Would my mum
pay for it?Probably not – she’d say,
“Make one out of a pine cone darling, I know you can.”I didn’t think I could, actually.And I didn’t have any pocket money of my own,
certainly not sixpence.What was I going
to do?I really needed the baby Jesus in a
manger.We really needed the baby Jesus
in a manger.

So…I took it.I STOLE IT!It was so easy.I waited until the lady behind the counter
turned her back to me and I slipped it into the pocket of my anorak.I already wanted to put it back but it was
too late, the deed was done.Feeling sick to my stomach, I slunk out of
the shop.I had never stolen anything
before; you can only imagine my sense of guilt.But imagine you’re catholic and you’ve stolen something; the guilt is
like a tangible, living thing.And when you’re
catholic and you’ve stolen the baby Jesus, the doors to hell might just as well
open up and swallow you, right there, right then.

I could see it now.Headlines
of the Winchester Catholic Digest: “Nine-year-old Bernadette Nason of Elm Road, Winchester,
was arrested today for stealing a shiny, plastic baby Jesus in a manger (made in Hong Kong) from
Woolworth’s.Peter Paul Bogan, headmaster
of St. Peter’s Roman
Catholic School
is quoted as saying, 'She always seemed like such a nice girl.I suppose the devil works in mysterious ways too.'”

I hardly remember the walk home.I do recall it burning a hole in my
pocket.It was so hot, my hand dripped
with the sweat of shame.When I got
home, I took the offending object out of my anorak pocket and placed it in the
middle of the Nativity scene so that Mary and Joseph could once more pick up
their roles as mother and father to the Son of God.But there was something I hadn’t considered,
something that wouldn’t have occurred to a 9 year-old.The shiny, plastic, made-in-Hong-Kong baby
Jesus in the manger was bigger than his parents.The object was huge, at least compared with
the Holy Mum and Dad.Our Mary and
Joseph were elegant and...well...small.My
too-hot-to-handle Holy Babe was gigantic.It was like setting a tractor in a room full of Lamborghinis.Mary and Joseph would’ve required a
stepladder just to gaze down on him lovingly.I was just beginning to realize the ridiculousness of the situation when
my mother walked into the room.

I didn’t enjoy walking back to Woolworths.Humble pie with a big dollop of groveling
apology was a hard thing for me to swallow.I hadn’t even had time to appreciate the error of my ways before being caught
in the act.There were no criminal
repercussions, no shame-filled stories repeated at a later date -- not until
now, anyway -- and no punishment that I recall.My mother had her own methods of instilling morals.Her quiet disappointment was almost more than
a person could stand.A daily glance at
the empty matchbox with cotton wool and an imaginary baby (which sufficed that
year for the infant in swaddling clothes) was enough to remind me that stealing
the baby Jesus wasn’t the way to build a crèche; it wasn’t the way to please my
mother, and it certainly wasn’t the way to get to heaven!

Monday, December 2, 2013

Many of you know that I worked at the Jebel Ali Hotel, just outside of Dubai City in the UAE from 1987 to 1989. And last year, I mentioned in my December blogging the brilliant Christmas decorations in the hotel lobby. Here is a December 1987 picture of the
life-size replica of Santa's sleigh which was suspended precariously above the
vast expanse of marble floor.The lobby
was, on an ordinary day, pretty spectacular, as you can see from its golden
elevator doors and sparkling tendril lighting.At Christmas-time, the whole place was splendiferous!

Dear Blog Friend

My mum (in England) and I (wherever I happened to be living) used to write each other every week...snail-mail letters, of course. When we both got computers and email became popular, we wrote every day...about everything, from the weather to what our neighbors were doing, from the political situation to popular shows on the telly. When she died, not only did I miss my lovely mum, I missed our regular written conversations; and I lost my daily writing fix. Now I admit the messages were sometimes ridiculously banal but they were often hilarious and always fun to receive. So to start with at least, I'm going to imagine my blog is a note to my mum in the hope that you'll like reading it as much I liked reading her notes to me.